Traditional music learning resources

Which Festival?

Tunebooks

​If you can, learn the tunes before you come to the sessions it will make your time with us much more enjoyable, and you will be one step closer to playing them without the book in front of you!

Occasionally we will have spare copies at festivals but don't bank on it - bring your own!

Our current tunebooks are available to download using the buttons below. In most cases click the green "Tunebook" button unless you play a transposing instrument, like alto sax (Eb), clarinet, soprano or tenor sax (Bb) or are used to reading bass clef and want to play the melody.

AUDIO

If you click the soundcloud button below, you will find out soundcloud site with two playlists - "Tuneworks Beginners" and "Tunes and Sets" featuring recordings of many other sets from the improvers book - Thanks to Clive Quick for making them available!

Playing for Ceilidhs workshop with This Way Up!

'Playing for Ceilidhs' is a series of workshops taking place at Shrewsbury Folk Festival. Using some great Shropshire tunes, you will learn the craft of playing in a ceilidh band from This Way Up!

Having played round the country and at most of the major folk festivals, you will join them to put on a ceilidh for friends and partners. Download the 'Playing for Ceilidhs' workshop tunebook below and look out for the workshops in your festival programme!

GET IN TOUCH!

Feedback, good ideas or just say Hello!

WELCOME!

​Tuneworks is committed to providing resources to help you learn traditional tunes. Feel free to download the tunebooks and if you want to join hundreds of like-minded musicians, join us at a workshop or session. If you learn the tunes in these books you'll have plenty in common with everyone else attending!

Our 'Tunebook' sessions will use one of the PDF books on the left. Beginners sessions typically have less tunes played at a slower speed and more repeats (the speed of tunes on the MP3 player to the left should guide you!) and improvers sessions will go a bit faster, with more tunes typically played three times through. Concentrate on playing without the sheet music! It's really important!!

The tunes are session standards, popular tunes that are played often at sessions up and down the country so they are useful tunes to know! They are mostly from Irish and English traditions and can be played on a wide range of instruments.

The Shropshire Tune Archive

​Working with Shrewsbury Folk festival and John Kirkpatrick and funded by the Arts Council, we now have a tunebook of Shropshire tunes! Play them, teach them, spread them far and wide!

Typesetting by Phil Marsh, proofreading Steve Rooney.

The Shropshire Tunes Video link is to footage of John Kirkpatrick playing the tunes!

Tuneworks started organizing tune workshops at Shrewsbury Folk Festival in 2007. We had the idea of bringing a group of improving tune players together to play a set of common tunes...no more sitting around waiting for 'your tunes' to come up, no more feeling like when it does it's going to be way too fast anyway. We wanted to create something that would have helped us when we started playing.....

We work with festivals that are keen to support learning in this way, and can design a package big or small enough for your needs. Please get in touch if you would like to know more.

​If you are looking for a local slow session using Tuneworks tunebooks, try this Facebook group!

"Hi Guys I would like to say a massive thank you for the time and encouragement you gave at Shrewsbury this weekend, As novice I came away with so much more confidence."

"Thanks to all the Tuneworks guys who helped this weekend be the best ever. I didn't have the nerve to join in last year but this even made the Improvers session! It's the most important part of the festival for me as folk music is all about joning in and passing the tunes down. Thanks for making my weekend so special."